It is the day after St Patrick’s Day. I am so hungover my face feels like it wants to run off down the street. All I want to do is sit here with a cup of coffee and watch Consolevania. What’s this you say? The dudes over at DSOGaming have spotted that Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is coming to Steam? Oh praise The God of Games. Let’s just all sit here and have lovely Rab’s Glasgow patois talk about Lament of Innocence on Consolvania as celebration.
As Other Senior Scottish Correspondent Craig Pearson reported way back in August, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is coming to the PC, so Konami must have decided to give us a very special treat by setting up us its predecessor on Steam too. Here is a video wot was shown at E3 about Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.

And here is our very own Robert Florence to soothe your awful Monday hangover with words on Lament of Innocence:

I’ve never been a huge fan of the 3D Castlevanias. I played the very first one way back on the N64. It had the most malevolent camera ever seen, boring combat and that infamous level with the explosive barrels. Also, skeletons on motorcycles for no apparent reason.

To be honest, I was basing my opinion on MoF purely off the previous handheld games (the ones on GBA and DS), which were absolutely excellent. But I did play the first Lords of Shadow game on Xbox. So while I don’t know whether I truly want Mirror of Fate, I know for damn sure that I don’t want the regular Lords of Shadow.

Enjoy it folks, it’s a rather lovely game. The musical score, the combat and a unique way of doing QTE events that feels more sensible. It’s also fun and simple enough to ‘100%’ as you can replay any level at any difficulty at any time, so there’s not advantage in playing on ‘hard’ from the off. You may as well wait until you’ve upgraded everything to max. A pretty good after-credits ending as well.

Castlevania was originally a series of platformer games, nothing “Metroidvania” about them. It wasn’t until Symphony of The Night on the Playstation, several years and games after the franchise began, that the gameplay was associated with them. They even remade one of those pre-Symphony game for the PSP (and included Symphony with it anyway).

Man, I hope we get some Metal Gear. I’ve been wanting to play Rising: Revengence Revenge of the Revengers for a while now but don’t have access to the appropriate hardware at the moment. Not that a Platinum/Kojima team-up is likely to be doing any PC development any time soon…

Played it a while ago on 360, you’re pretty much spot on with that (though replace “some progression” with “holy shit a lot of progression”). The entire game has a vaguely MMO raid-ish structure to it, in that every “match” is a matter of completing a SotN-style Castlevania level, getting to the boss at the end, and beating him for some loot rolling fun, all with a (30 minute I think) time limit and six players controlling various Castlevania protagonists.

It had a pretty heavy emphasis on progression, drawing off the post-SotN RPG elements in Castlevania, but it was pretty interesting in that each character “leveled” independently and in a way suited to whatever game they came from. For example, Alucard would get weapons and spells from enemies/chests/bosses, Soma would get weapons as loot and souls from defeating enemies, Charlotte would be able to absorb certain enemy spells, etc. And each character played differently, so you got a pretty cool amount of variety despite the limited number of levels (6 pre-DLC + hard mode, IIRC).

Overall, it was a ridiculously fun game, and fairly unique as well. Has some balance and matchmaking issues, but otherwise it would be great on PC (and now I want it on PC and am sad).

I am probably getting old, but shouldn’t the hero in these games wield a whip, with other weapons just as a sidearm? And while we’re on it, shouldn’t the endboss be like, Dracula, no matter how much times you destroy him in previous titles?

I think chronologically, it comes pre-whips and other iconic elements of the latter (or “classic”) games.

Which might be just a lazy attempt to explain away the differences in gameplay — even though that’s hardly necessary, I think. I mean I watched the Castlevania-retrospective on Gametrailers some time ago, but I can’t say I cared much about continuity in a franchise that basically was “Let’s make a Hammer Studios-inspired platformer!”, with the story a distant afterthought.
It’s not as bad as the completely ridiculous attempts to cramp all the Zelda-games in one timeline, but still, knowing the details about Simon Belmont’s great-grand parents is not really central to playing “Symphony of The Night”. And that’s fine! Just give me a good game, is what I want to say, and keep enough, albeit not necessarily all of the ideas associated with the franchise, and I will be ok.

The Lords of Shadow Game is one of those reboots that brush along the original story and lore for a bit, then gives it the finger and does something else entirely. As such it’s Castlevania only in name. The result is a rather mediocre but well presented game.
The gameplay is utterly shallow, the puzzles perplexingly stupid where going “this lever does something” is already way overthinking it, the combat is without challenge and makes the button mashing of the new DmC look overly complex in comparison. But it looks stunning, sounds aptly clichéd in terms of its music and paid for some high grade voice actors (including Patrick Stewart, which sadly sounds a tad bored here). It’s an all style no substance kinda game that also happens to lift a middlefinger to the franchise. Not sure the franchise will notice, as it had been horribly stale for a while and a decent middle finger might actually be what it needs. Lords of Shadows isn’t the right kind of middle finger though.

From the trailer that’s what I’d have guessed, without ever playing. Looks like another God of War type button mash, I’m guessing with a liberal sprinkling of QTE?

If Mario and Samus can survive the transition to 3d, then surely Simon can figure something out as well? Something open-worldish like Metroid Prime. It needs to have dastardly puzzles and boss fights almost as difficult as Dark Souls. Really, it needs to be half puzzler and half action game. Otherwise it’s going to get lost in the herd of games exactly the same as this one.

I had this on PS3. Its alright. Nothing amazing, pretty long (overly so) with some pretty obvious borrowing of stuff from other games.
Might pick up the PC version depending on the price, never did quite get around to finishing LoS on console.

I recently picked it up on PS3 for fifteen dollars, and I think the money might have been better used by lighting it on fire. I do not understand how this miserably paced, exposition and invisible wall laden snoozefest got reviews any better than Castlevania 64.

Maybe console-only people have the inclination to play such miserable games, but I’ll stick with games that aren’t soul-suckingly terrible.

The story in the game is a nonsensical mish-mash of various lores and mythologies and the voice-over narration by Patrick Stewart is awful. Other than that it’s a fantastic game. The art work is gorgeous, the level design is great, the skills and abilities are all fun to use, and the combat is a near-perfect mix of simplicity to get into and complexity to take advantage of. I’m glad to see that PC-exclusive gamers will get a chance to give this a go, as I had a ton of fun with it on the PS3.

This is actually pretty exciting; framerate was BY FAR the biggest issue with Lords of Shadow, to the point it pretty much overshadowed the entire experience for me. Being about to play it from a fresh perspective without those crippling technical issues will be nice.